01PLOT

The episode begins with the Turtles watching a monster movie about a monster in Cleveland. Splinter says that the Turtles watch too much TV, especially since their monster movies interrupt his meditation.

Meanwhile, Shredder is experimenting with Krang's Matter transporter, which allows him to teleport anyone or anything wherever in the world he wants in just a few seconds. Shredder demonstrates this by sending Bebop and Rocksteady to a nearby landfill, where a machine grabs the two mutants and sends them down to the sewers. There, Bebop and Rocksteady find the Turtles' sewer lair by sheer dumb luck. The Turtles fight Bebop and Rocksteady, but the attack is cut short when Shredder teleports both of them back.

Since their old TV was destroyed in the fight, the Turtles call April O'Neil to come with a new TV.

It turns out that Rocksteady left behind a carton of Chinese food from Woo's Oriental Palace, and April decides to check up on the place to see if she can find leads to Shredder. She asks if anyone has seen men who resemble a rhino and a warthog, and learns that the food was delivered to a warehouse on the pier.

At the warehouse, she finds the transporter and takes pictures, only for a stray cat to accidentally activate it before leaping onto the platform with her. A dazed April is left on the matter transporter, feeling woozy and horrified at the fact her nails now resemble claws.

Going back to her apartment, April is followed home by a large group of cats, and begins to mix her speech with meowing while talking to Irma. She also develops a taste for milk.

The Turtles drop by Woo's, and immediately end up in a nasty fight with the wrestlers and martial-artists who frequent the place.

Later in her office at the Channel 6 building, April's physical and mental condition has deteriorated further - she has claws, catlike eyes, a slightly deformed face, hisses and often punctuates her speech with cat-like vocalizations. Irma realizes what's happening, but is powerless to stop April from leaving the building and running away. Irma contacts the Turtles and meets with them at a subway station to tell them what happened.

April's goal is to get back to the warehouse and reverse the transformation, but Shredder and his mutants quickly cage her and put a mind control collar on her. Shredder commands her to hunt down Splinter, which she does after freeing a tiger from the zoo. After narrowly avoiding the tiger, the Turtles find April's photos.

Splinter is meditating when April and the tiger appear in the lair, and despite his terror, Splinter manages to reach April through her brainwashing. The Turtles force her to recognize them, but the collar begins controlling her until Leonardo slashes the collar off. Michelangelo manages to entrap and cage the tiger with a windup toy.

In the warehouse, Shredder discovers that the Mind Control Collar is destroyed. Suddenly, a rat (which Bebop had earlier used to mock the mutated April) bites Bebop and then leaps up on the Matter Transporter. Rocksteady tries to hit the rat with his wooden sword, but instead he hits the transporter, which immediately overloads. Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady run out just before the transporter explodes and destroys the warehouse. The Shredder vows revenge against the Turtles.

Because the effects of Matter Transporter were only temporary, April soon becomes human again. Irma drops by the sewer in hopes of meeting Master Splinter, but is horrified that he's actually a rat.

02CAST & APPEARANCES

Renae Jacobs

Barry Gordon

Barry Gordon

Jennifer Darling

Cam Clarke

Townsend Coleman

Rob Paulsen

Cam Clarke

James Avery

Peter Renaday

ALSO APPEARING

Angry Diner · Rob PaulsenKrang · Pat FraleyMyron Bimbleton · Peter RenadayVernon Fenwick · Peter RenadayWoo · Townsend Coleman

03OBJECTS, VEHICLES & PLACES

OBJECTS & VEHICLESBōChannel 6 mini-cameraChannel 6 newsvanComlinkKatanaMatter transporterMind control collarNunchakuSaiTurtlecomWalking stick

LOCATIONSAlleywayApril's apartmentBokkenCity streetsCity ZooJunk YardShredder's hideoutTurtle LairWoo's Oriental Palace

SPECIESCatHumansHuman-born mutant catMutant ratMutant rhinocerosMutant turtlesMutant warthogRatTiger

04SCREEN GRABS

9 frames. Screencaps via Turtlepedia (CC BY-SA).

05MEMORABLE QUOTES

Splinter: I warn you...too much television warps the mind, and promotes violence.

Customer: _(approaches Turtles in trenchcoats)_ Who are _you_ supposed to be? Humphrey Bogus?! Leonardo: You hit the nail right on the head, sweetheart. Michelangelo: Yeah, now listen here, you mugs. I'm givin' the orders around here, see?

Michelangelo: All right, so I don't _do_ Bogart. Customer: ENOUGH stalling! You turkeys are about to get plucked!

Irma: My best friend has turned into a _cat_! ....I don't know whether to call 911 or the animal shelter!

Splinter: Cats...the one creature I truly feared.

06TRIVIA

The table holding up the Turtles' television set is missing a leg, and is supported by a few hardcover books to keep balance. Not that this matters for long, anyway, as Bebop totally wrecks the TV barely three minutes into the episode.
Donatello and Raphael have eaten at Woo's Oriental Palace before, at least enough to know that it's bad news, including the food.
Woo's Oriental Palace is chock full of Asian stereotypes, from customers wearing gis and being sumo wrestlers, to Woo's act of going "Hee-YAH!" when chopping some cabbage and judo flipping a disgruntled customer.
Bebop and Rocksteady's appreciation for Chinese take-out food will be seen again in "The Turtle Terminator".
Irma has a key to April's apartment and is waiting there when the Turtles enter through the window. This might suggest that they shared an apartment for some time after the events of "A Thing About Rats," but "The Case of the Killer Pizzas" establishes that Irma has an apartment of her own, possibly inside the same building.
This is Irma's first interaction with the Turtles. She apparently took this a whole lot better than April did (of course, Irma had suspected about them for several episodes beforehand). Unfortunately, the same can't be said about her reaction to Splinter.
When Michelangelo kicks Rocksteady into the wall horn first it plays the same piece of footage from when Donatello did the same thing earlier but mirror-flipped.
This is the first of three occasions that April is temporarily turned into a mutant, the second being a fish woman in "Rebel Without a Fin" and as a giant wasp in "Revenge of the Fly".
As a mutant, April's claws are sharp enough to rip a metal lock from solid concrete.
Understandably, Splinter has a fear of cats.
Playmates Toys created an April O'Neil action figure based off this episode, as part of their Mutatin' _TMNT_ series. Mutatin' April (1993) was a part of the second wave of this series, along with Mutatin' variants of Shredder, Rahzar, Tokka, and Foot Soldier. The April figure could change from human to humanoid feline and came with accessories including clamp-on claws, mutatin' video bag, Retromutagen ooze canister, and a mega mutation chart which illustrated April's transformation.
When Irma meets the Turtles in the subway station, Don grabs her by the mouth when she is being too loud and about to blow their cover. This conflicts with his normal passive behavior.
Leonardo imitates Humphrey Bogart in the restaurant. Michelangelo follows this up with an James Cagney impression.
This one of two episodes in which the titular plot is instigated due to a technological malfunction resulting from a cat pressing a random button on a control panel, the other episode being "Funny, They Shrunk Michelangelo".

07HOME MEDIA

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: Return of the TechnodromeTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Volume 2Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Classic Series Collection